What happens if you buy a Space Coast home with an open permit?

Florida law protects arms-length buyers. Under Florida Statute 553.79, a local building department in Brevard County cannot deny you a permit, cite you, or fine you solely because a previous owner left a permit open on the property you bought.

That protection is real, and it is also narrower than most people assume. It stops the county or city from punishing you. It does not make the unfinished work disappear, it does not satisfy your insurance carrier, and it does not help you when you go to sell the house on Florida's Space Coast four years from now.

Open permits and unpermitted work show up constantly in Brevard County transactions, usually on homes where an owner added a screen room, replaced a roof, converted a garage, or ran a new electrical panel and never got the final inspection. Here is how to find these before you close and what the law actually says about clearing them.

What is the difference between an open permit and unpermitted work?

They are two different problems and they get solved two different ways.

  • An open permit means someone pulled a permit with the building department, work began, and the permit was never finaled. There is a public record of it. It sits in the system.
  • Unpermitted work means the work was done and no permit was ever pulled. There is no record at all, which is why it usually surfaces during an inspection or an appraisal rather than a title search.

Open permits are the more common finding in Brevard County because they leave a paper trail. Unpermitted work is the more expensive finding, because bringing it into compliance may mean opening walls.

How do you check for open permits on a Brevard County property?

Florida law requires local enforcement agencies to post the status of received permit applications on their websites, and to allow electronic submission of applications and inspection requests. In practice, that means you can look up permit history yourself.

For unincorporated Brevard County, including Merritt Island, Suntree, and Viera, permit records run through the county's Planning and Development building permits department and its online citizen access portal. If the property sits inside a Space Coast city limit such as Melbourne, Rockledge, Cocoa Beach, Satellite Beach, Indialantic, or Indian Harbour Beach, that city's building department holds the records, not the county.

Do this during your inspection period, not after. A permit search takes minutes and is the cheapest due diligence available on a Brevard County home.

How do you close an open permit in Florida?

Florida Statute 553.79 spells out the paths. A property owner may close a permit regardless of whether that owner is the one listed on the application, using any of these:

  1. Retain the original contractor listed on the permit to finish the work and obtain inspections.
  2. Hire a different appropriately licensed Florida contractor. That contractor is not liable for the original contractor's defective work and is only liable for what they perform.
  3. Assume the role of owner-builder under the applicable statutes.

"Close" simply means the requirements of the permit have been satisfied.

There is also a practical shortcut in the law. If a permit has expired and its requirements have been substantially completed, as determined by the local enforcement agency, the permit may be closed without pulling a new one, and the work needed to close it may follow the building code in effect when the original application was received. For an older Melbourne or Merritt Island home, that can be the difference between a paperwork fix and a full code upgrade.

What is the six-year rule?

Under 553.79, a local enforcement agency may close a building permit six years after the permit was issued, even without a final inspection, if the agency determines that no apparent safety hazards exist.

Read that carefully: the agency may, not must. It is a discretionary cleanup tool for old records, not a guarantee that a permit from 2018 on your Rockledge house will vanish on schedule. Do not build a negotiation around it.

What protection do you get as the buyer?

This is the part that keeps transactions alive. The statute states that a local enforcement agency may not deny issuance of a building permit to, issue a notice of violation to, or fine, penalize, sanction, or assess fees against an arms-length purchaser of a property for value solely because a permit applied for by a previous owner was not closed. The agency keeps all its rights and remedies against the prior owner and the contractor listed on the permit.

The statute also says an agency cannot refuse a contractor a permit solely because that contractor appears on other permits that were not closed.

So the government cannot come after you. Your insurance carrier, your future buyer, and your future buyer's lender are separate matters entirely, and none of them are bound by that statute.

Why this matters more on the Space Coast than you think

Brevard County has a large inventory of homes built in the 1960s through the 1980s across Merritt Island, Melbourne, Rockledge, and the beachside towns. Those homes have been through multiple roofs, multiple air conditioning systems, and in many cases a screen enclosure or an addition. Every one of those events should have generated a permit.

Florida insurance underwriting leans hard on roof age, electrical, and plumbing documentation. An unpermitted roof replacement on a Space Coast home is not just a code question, it is a binding question. If you are evaluating an older Brevard County property, pair the permit search with a 4-point inspection and a wind mitigation inspection.

One more detail from the statute worth noticing: every building permit issued in Florida must carry a notice stating that additional restrictions may exist in the public records of the county and that additional permits may be required from other entities such as water management districts, state agencies, or federal agencies. On waterfront Brevard County property, that footnote does a lot of work.

Frequently asked questions

Should I ask the seller to close the permit before closing?

In most cases, yes, and the cleanest version puts it in writing with a deadline. The seller had the relationship with the original contractor and the knowledge of what was done. Once you own the Brevard County property, the cost and the coordination become yours even though the statute shields you from agency penalties.

Will a title search catch an open permit?

Not automatically. Open permits live in the building department's records, not the county's official records where deeds and liens are recorded. A separate permit search of the correct jurisdiction is what surfaces them, which is why identifying whether the property is in a Space Coast city or unincorporated Brevard County matters so much.

Can I get a new permit if there is an old one still open?

If you purchased at arms length and for value, the local enforcement agency cannot deny you a permit solely because a prior owner's permit was left open. That is the specific protection the statute grants. It does not extend to permits you left open yourself.

Permit history is the kind of thing that separates a smooth Space Coast closing from a stressful one, and it is entirely findable before you sign anything. If you are buying in Melbourne, Merritt Island, Viera, Rockledge, or anywhere in Brevard County and you want someone who checks this early, let's talk. My partner Nichole and I got your back. Reach out anytime at (321) 212-7676 or www.livingspacecoast.com.